Orca: End Of The Cycle
by JonasGrant
Summary: Modified soldiers and power armors are a common sight in Council space, but the likes of the Spartans are not all that common and team Orca might just manage to carve themselves a place in the galaxy, should it survive another cleansing.


**The ass end of nowhere**

**March 20**

**2553**

**1255 Hours**

"This is stupid. Seriously, doc, you've got us out here in the ass end of nowhere for three days now, think you can get us back somewhere we can at least shoot our problems?"

This is the first time Fal speaks with the doc since she set foot on the ship and in light of the current staring contest over the kitchen table, I kinda wish she'd kept quiet.

To my left, Trevor munches on his burger with enthusiasm, oblivious to the sudden rise of tension while, to the right, Iona gives Fal a stare of death.

The doctor puts down her meal and takes a second to prepare her answer, "I am working with very little resources, trying to convert a human Shaw-Fujikawa translight engine into something resembling the Covenant model, if I make even the slightest mistake, this ship will end up sucked trough a black hole into a hundred meter long Spaghetti. I could botch my job, but I doubt you'd like the result."

Fal nods once and return to her plate, "Alright, take your time then."

G317 is a lot like an animal, when you think about it; aggressive, unsubtle, predatory and quick to hit the berserk button, but she is completely oblivious to feelings such as remorse, shame or resentment, as aggressive as her question was, the doc supplied a satisfying explanation so Fal won't push it, unlike many other peoples who would try to justify their anger or incitate the doc to work faster.

Abe, in front of me, begins swapping extremely complex scientific talk out of which I can only salvage a word out of ten, prompting me to start a discussion of my own with Iona.

"Once that's contract's done," She looks up, just knowing I'm speaking to her, "I'd like to go to Emerald Cove…"

A slight smile tugs at the corner of her lips. We trained in underwater operation there. Curtis sabotaged my and Abby's tank and, in return, we stole all of his gear while he was sleeping on one of the island, leaving him stranded, half naked and without supplies other that his desalinization kit.

The next of the week we spent on an island that had previously been occupied, cooking clams and tropical fishes and learning how to surf.

We're halfway trough the re-enactment when Bob bursts out laughing. I know exactly why.

"Then, Zombie boy sees somethin' triangular stickin' from the water and he starts yellin' 'Shark!' like it woulda made it go away!" Fal and Trev join him in laughing, finding it just as funny as they did back then. "And Chris swims and swims so fuckin' fast he got halfway across the island and even then, it's the palm three that stopped him!"

"So what was it really?" The doc asks, interrupting her conversation with Abby.

Iona just grins evilly while answering, "Chief Mendez, our chief instructor, turns out, the Spartan IIs had ended up on that island too. When he found our instructor, he deduced where we had gone."

"Curtis had sunburns all over…" Abby recalls with a sadistic grin, "I almost felt bad for the man." She then plant her eyes in mine, "But that's not why you want to go there, is it?"

God damnit Abe!

"No," I confess, "it ain't," I managed to piece some memories together while we were there, little details, but it brought me to a simple conclusion, "Emerald's where I'm born."

There's a few seconds of silence around the table, then Trevor speaks, nodding slowly, "Makes sense; all there is there are clams and starfishes."

Abe is the first to get it, "Because of his regenerative abilities and…"

"No, because he's dumb as a rock and totally spineless!" Bob quips, earning a streak of ketchup across the face.

I duck under the mustard counter attack and roll away before…

*Splat!*

Should have known better that to start a food war with the team's sniper…

Iona looks up at the yellow streak running across her face and growl dangerously.

I wipe the mustard in my eyes and signal Bob to go right while I take left. At the table, Iona's already organized the troops and they're getting up.

"Excuse us, doctor," She politely tells Farkas, who's watching with interest, "We must go educate our little brothers.

Bob and I begin running right after that, Fal and Abby going after me while I guess Big guy and Boss are going after the sniper.

My shoulder hit the wall quite painfully, but I recover fast enough to duck under Fal's outstretched hands.

I speed past the infirmary and Hydroponic area, practically feeling Fal's breath on the back of my neck along the way. She's faster than me, but not by much and the corridor is not long enough for her to reach her peak speed.

No clue how that happens, but I find myself diving headlong down the hatch to the cargo bay, landing with a roll under Fal's angry bitching about my lack of fear of injury.

Her exact words are "Fucking Zombie boy!"

I recover from the roll twenty centimeters form the railing. A bit more and I was barreling down eight meters…

I don't stop; I jump, spinning sideway in midair and landing on the bay floor with another roll.

There are plenty of crates here to hide behind, but that would be too obvious. Instead, I climb the chain leading to the crane and hide in the dark folds between the ceiling's support struts.

When Fal arrives, soon followed by Abby, they only see Iona and Trev, coming from the opposite door.

"You lost yours?" Iona calls, smiling, and Fal only nods, squinting to pierce the darkness bellow.

Iona and Abby look up, but I'm hidden by the large support strut and too far to the back of the cargo area for them to have a good angle at me. Of course, I need to duck my head behind cover when they look too closely, but I manage to stay hidden by squeezing myself between the two support struts, holding in place trough pressure and friction.

"Sneaky bastards," Trevor growls, "Probably hiding right next to us, laughing their asses off."

"Yeah," Fal scoffs, "You take your eyes off them just one second and poof! They're gone!"

Iona shakes her head and that, "Okay, guys, you win, you can come out!"

I trust Boss enough to know this isn't a trap, so I let go and use the thick chain to rappel my way down, sticking my tongue out at Fal and Abe on the way down.

"You guys are getting rusty," I call upon hitting the floor, stretching my arms and legs a little, "Maybe we should hide your stuff, make you train your seeking skills…"

"Screw you, Zombie boy." Is the general answer.

Bob appears next to me out of the darkness and I instinctively step away from the possible threat.

"You ain't much better, bro…" He laughs with a wink.

After that, Iona decides we should reconvert a part of the hold into a gymnasium and set up war games like Mendez used to put us trough, so we don't become soft.

0

0

0

**Spartan-class Freighter **_**Thermopylae**_

**?**

**?**

I wake up to the sound of alarms, my cabin plunged in darkness.

Not much to see anyway; there's the bed, opposite to the ladder, the shower and toilet to the left and the dresser to the right. Plus, as a Spartan, I can see pretty well in the dark, enough to orient myself, anyway.

I decide to suit up before I leave the room and take five minutes or so to put my armor on in the dark. Guess I'll have to work on that, it took me half as long the first time, but I had a giant flower roaming around looking for me back then.

As I climb up from my room, Trevor is descending from his, just over me.

I let Big guy go first and jump after him.

He's wearing his armor as well, the scratched brown plating glistening in my suit's low-light vision enhancement.

"What's up?" I ask the heavy gunner, who just shrugs his large shoulder pads, "Alright," I continue, "Go get some guns and meet me in the cockpit."

Trev nods once and we part ways. I meet Fal just as she climbs out of her room and tell her to wake the others.

I soon pass the empty common area and…

"Chris," Iona's voice in my comm. almost gives me a heart attack, "meet me in the cargo bay ASAP."

I flash my acknowledgment light green and turn around.

0

0

0

**Five minutes earlier.**

Abby loved this ship, she loved ships in general, but this one was her favorite ever; whereas most military vessels were designed with functionality and cheapness in mind, this freighter was made for practicality and comfort and although outdated, basic human comfort hadn't changed much in…. Well, ever.

So, unlike the military ships, outfitted with rigid command layout and little customizability, the cockpit was made to accommodate a single pilot. Every tactile screen could switch its function with another one if the pilot preferred and the joystick could easily be exchanged for simpler or more complex models, so long as they were compatible.

Abejundio spent more time in the cockpit than in her cabin now, customizing, installing videogames, fine tuning the commands. Iona had made it clear that the room was all hers, since beyond G051, no one in the squad had enough piloting skill to be sent there for anything other than temporary replacement and maintenance.

So when the radar blip appeared, it did so square in her face and she took exactly three seconds to recognize the Unggoy ship.

She immediately sounded the alarm and contacted the doc in engineering.

"We have problems, senorita, you have three minutes to get that drive working."

"The Grunts?" Came the tired answer.

"Yeah."

There was some resignation in the Doc's voice. She knew they Pylae was not equipped with weapons and that its stealth systems would not keep it safe for long. The only solution in that case would be to make a jump with the half assedly re-assembled drive, solution that had a fifty-fifty chance of ending in a spaghetti scenario.

Two minutes to jury rig a drive to the ship was a tight schedule, but she had worked tighter during the war and always came out no worse for wear and having learned a new shortcut.

0

0

0

**Cargo bay**

The suits are skintight and flexible, but seem to offer quite a bit of protection nonetheless, my scans reveal energy shields, although the output seems much lower than those of a Spartan's.

The three figures are looking around our hold looking quite impressed, for some reason. Ship people, they love old rugged freighters over recent, streamlined, shiny flying toys.

They speak in complete gibberish, as far as I'm concerned, and I understand every major spoken language while my onboard translator can translate everything else. That means they're not speaking any known language and, judging by their strange fingers and toes, as well as semi digitigrade legs, are not human.

I like their armors, it's delicate looking with some nice but discreet ornaments and engraving. Pretty the things up but don't sacrifice combat effectiveness. I know how it is, I do the same thing with my own armor. Figure they wear theirs all the time, just like we do… I'd love to have a talk with these guys.

I'm just here for security, however, I don't get to talk to them and my cloaking field is keeping the passengers from so much as noticing me. All they'll see is Iona, the doctor and Abby, as soon as the three will be done preparing… Whatever there is to prepare for a meeting like this.

Kat is doing the translation, apparently using data sent to her by the unknown ship we came across. It's damaged, came out of some hyperspace jump prematurely because of some sort of interference, from what they told us. Probably our fault.

"Kat," I call the AI, switching the M7 SMG to the left hand, "who exactly are these guys?"

I am standing on the catwalk directly above the three, gun aimed at them. I like to know who and what I kill, makes it easier to beat myself over it latter. Figure the day I stop feeling bad about a kill is the day I'll really need some time off.

"Quarians," The AI replies, as if I should know the word, "pilgrims, from what I gather, they have obviously had extensive contact with Earth, as their translator software is more than fluent in English." She may like to fool around most of the time, but Kat is still an AI, a solid block of knowledge, when you ask her something, she gets it done. "I managed to pull over a thousand new languages from it as well, uploading to your suit now."

There's a pop and a whine, then the gibberish changes to English:

"… forged titanium plating! I haven't seen a ship built without mass effect technology since that Krogan shuttle Prazza brought back!" The one at the center marvels, the translator rendering every voice inflictions and parasites from his suit.

"I don't like it, Vattor," the woman on the left whines, "their translator software seemed very outdated and they just happened to be there when the shuttle malfunctioned, that's no coincidence!"

Smart one. A bit paranoid, but if it were me, I'd have planted explosives all over the other ship's hull, as contingency.

I blink open my connection to our AI. "Kat, could you do a sweep of the hull?"

"Wattcha looking for, Chris?"

I think about a way to put it for a second, then answer "Things that go boom."

She responds by displaying a schematic of the _Pylae_ and the progression of the scanner sweep.

Ignoring the thing, I focus on the conversation bellow.

The sight of Iona and Abby, both roughly two meter tall, fully armored warriors with a massive assault rifles strapped on their backs, has a quite an effect on the Quarians; hidden weapons are drawn and one of the guys distributes quick and quiet orders, telling the others who's going to shoot at who and where everyone will take cover. No words, just discreet sign language and, perhaps, a squad encrypted comm., but I doubt it, otherwise I'd have picked something up.

"Is there a problem here?" The leader speaks as Iona comes to a stop, a respectful distance away.

Iona shakes her helmet and slowly pull the thing off, "Not unless you plan on starting any." She attaches the helmet to her belt and takes a step forward, offering her hand to the tall guy leading the group.

His pistol in the off hand, he shakes Iona's heavy titanium glove, "We are not." He does not remove his helmet and keeps his weapon in hand. "Are these persons your mechanics?" He asks after an awkward silence.

He seems dubious, probably because Abby brought a pair of plasma rifles along. She loves plasma way too much for her own sake.

Iona nods, "They are, you mentioned a broken mass effect field generator, do you need any help fixing it?" Iona is kind hearted, but she also has an ulterior motive; she wants to find out just what the hell a mass effect thingy is.

The girl shakes her head, "No, we're Quarians, if we say it cannot be fixed, it will stay broken." I believe her, they look the scrappy type. The second guy nods slightly and steps forward, cutting to the chase "We would appreciate a lift to our fleet, however…"

Fleet? These guys are part of a fleet? They sound barely old enough to be part of an high-school!

Well, then again, look who's talking…

"Scan complete, Orca four!" I almost choke at the outburst in my ears, "Nothing to report, only bugs in the windshield and a few road kills stuck on the bumper."

Horrible joke, but what can you expect from an AI? I noticed that she'd started speaking in a more mature way and compensate with horrible jokes ever since she's been aboard the ship, like the responsibilities that were dumped on her lap are taking their toll or something. Hard to conceive an artificial intelligence having stress issues but Kat isn't an ordinary AI.

"Thank you, Kat, but ease on the joke, please, it's unsettling."

"Afraid I will start singing Daisy bell?"

"Kinda, yeah."

Down below, Boss finally strikes a deal with the three Quarians; we'll bring them, along with their supplies and pilgrimage gifts, and they help with the refit of the _Thermopylae, _since they're such good mechanics. We're good too, but it's a lot of work for seven and we need to get the covenant drive to work properly, as something clearly went wrong last time.

Lots of fun in perspective.

"Chris!" Iona looks up at me, "Come help us unload the stuff from their shuttle."

I see in her eyes that he wants me to warn these guys that we're not to be messed with, so I leap over the railing and deactivate my cloaking on the way down. The impact is as light as I can manage with a half ton armor falling from almost ten meters, which means brutal, but I don't squash anything and land with my knee ramming against the MJOLNIR's chest plate with a discreet spark of shields rubbing against each others.

I get up and roll my shoulder pads. "Aye aye, Boss."

The second guy almost jumped in the girl's arms. Priceless. Unnecessary and somewhat evil, but priceless.


End file.
